The present invention relates in general to telecommunication networks and systems, more specifically telecommunication networks and systems enabled for collecting network coverage information.
Telecommunication networks provide a facility for communicating to and from a user equipment (UE) using mobile devices that comprises a rechargeable power supply.
For the deployment and the maintenance of a telecommunication network, coverage deployment software and field radio measurement of the coverage are very important, especially for areas with insufficient network coverage or high densification of UEs.
The past and current network deployments (2G and 3G) show that handling efficiently indoor coverage is a key to insure a good quality of service for the subscribers of telecommunication networks. Communication from indoor environments is very important in terms of usage for said subscribers, but, due to access rights for buildings, the telecommunication network operators have very limited means to measure indoor coverage within said buildings.
Previous patent documents such as Korean Patent Document No. 20010050257 and United States Patent Publication No. 2006/183487 rely on network level information in known geographical location to detect zones with insufficient coverage to take measures to improve the quality of service. However, even though Location Based Services (LBS) based on Global Positioning System (GPS) are widely spread, these methods are not suitable for the detection of indoor coverage problems, where satellite signal cannot be properly acquired. Moreover, those systems require measurement, calculations and information processing that all consume a large amount of the user equipment capabilities.
Today there is a need for an information collection solution that can be easily implemented on the existing and future telecommunication infrastructures.